lucid dreaming_ gateway to the inner self - robert waggoner

Moment Point Press, Inc.
PO Box 920287
Needham, MA 02492
www.momentpoint.com
Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self
Copyright © 2009 by Robert Waggoner
Cover design: Kathryn Sky-Peck
Cover graphic: Rob Colvin, Getty Images
Text design and typesetting: Phillip Augusta
Printing: McNaughton & Gunn
Distribution: Red Wheel Weiser Conari, www.redwheelweiser.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
“Hot Air Balloon Over Luxor” photo illustration appears courtesy of Continental Tours, Cairo.
Copyrighted material by E. W. Kellogg iii appears by kind permission of Ed Kellogg.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Waggoner, Robert
Lucid dreaming: gateway to the inner self / Robert Waggoner
p. cm.
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 978–1–930491–14–4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Lucid dreams I. Title.
BF1099.L82W34 2009
154.6’3—dc22 2008028369
First printing September 2008
ISBN 978–1–930491–14–4
Printed in the United States on acid-free, partially recycled paper
Distributed to the trade by Red Wheel Weiser
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface
PART ONE: THE JOURNEY INWARD
1:Stepping Through the Gate
2:Does the Sailor Control the Sea?
3:Moving in Mental Space
4:Beyond Freud's Pleasure Principle
5: Independent Agents and the Voice of the Unconscious
6: Feeling-Tones and Review Committees
7: Experiencing the Light of Awareness
8: Connecting with the Hidden Observer of Dreaming
9: The Five Stages of Lucid Dreaming
PART TWO: EXPLORING THE PSYCHE
10: Creating the Dream Reality
11: Varieties of Dream Figures
12: Fishing for Information
13: Healing Yourself and Others
14: Consciously Connecting via Telepathy
15: Forward-Looking, Precognitive Lucid Dreams
16: Mutual Lucid Dreaming
17: Interacting with the Deceased
18: The Unified Self in a Connected Universe
Appendix A: Frequently Asked Questions
Appendix B: Tips and Techniques
Endnotes
Selected Bibliography
Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE PERSON I NEED TO THANK THE MOST IS THE PERSON WHO CHAL lenged me the most, Ed Kellogg,
Ph.D. More than any other lucid dreamer, Ed pushed me to search deeper, examine lucid
awareness more thoughtfully, and question the apparent limits of lucidity. I found his expertise
and insight, particularly in the areas of lucid dream healing, mutual lucid dreaming, and lucid
dreams of the deceased simply unparalleled. This book, and chapters 13, 16, and 17
specifically, exist, in large measure, because of Ed's generosity of spirit and friendship.
Many others have provided precious support along the way. My thanks to Lucy Gillis, my
coeditor in our quarterly labor of love, The Lucid Dream Exchange, and a talented lucid
dreamer in her own right; Linda Lane Magallón, who ushered me into using lucid dreams
experimentally through three years of monthly lucid goals and then introduced me to the
International Association for the Study of Dreams, where I have met many wonderful people and
extraordinary lucid dreamers, including Keelin, Beverly D'Urso, Ph.D., Clare Johnson, Ph.D.,
and Fariba Bogzaran, Ph.D. (to name only a few), and heard fascinating lectures by some of the
pioneers of lucid dream research—Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., Jayne Gackenbach, Ph.D., and many
others. I am indebted to lucid dreamer Alan Worsley and researcher Dr. Keith Hearne for
providing the first scientific proof of lucid dreaming more than thirty years ago.
The altruistic spirit of lucid dreamers who willingly offered their lucid dreams for inclusion
in this book touched me deeply. Though some preferred to remain anonymous (and some I have
already mentioned), I also wish to thank Jane Ahring, John Galleher, Connie Gavalis, David L.
Kahn, Ian Koslow, Moe Munroe, pasQuale Ourtane, Justin Tombe, Joscelyne Wilmouth, Sylvia
Wilson, and Suzanne Wiltink.
The invitations to speak at campuses and venues such as Sonoma State University, Evergreen
State College, the Inner Arts Center in Alexandria, Virginia, and Sheila Asato's Monkey Bridge
Arts near Minneapolis, Minnesota, helped me articulate my discoveries and meet others who
were using lucid dreams as a path to greater creativity, self understanding, and exploration; my
thanks to all who made that possible and for their interest and enthusiasm.
To my editor, Sue Ray, humble thanks for her gracious acceptance of my first book and near
infinite efforts and patience in preparing it for publication. Heartfelt thanks to my many, many
friends who encouraged me this past year and along life's way. Last, I need to thank my wife,

Wendy, for her love and faith, as I pursued this waking dream: a guidebook to consciously
exploring the dream state, the Self, and the vast unconscious reality of the mind.
PREFACE
FOR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS, I HAVE PRACTICED LUCID DREAMING , the ability to become
consciously aware of dreaming while in the dream state. During this time, I have had
approximately 1,000 lucid dreams, most logged away in dozens of dream journals and computer
files.
Like many, I initially considered lucid or conscious dreaming as a fascinating playground for
the mind. I could fly over treetops, push through walls, make objects appear, even walk on water
(dream water, that is)—all while conscious in the dream state. As the years passed, however,
certain pivotal lucid dreams opened my mind to the possibility that lucid dreaming offered a
gateway to so much more.
In part one of this book, you will read about my journey into lucid dreaming, beginning with
simple experiments such as asking a dream figure to explain the dream symbolism or tell me
what it represents. The results contain both expected and unexpected elements. While the
expected certainly seemed understandable, I found the unexpected responses troubling. If the
lucid dream was a product of my mind, then how did a completely unexpected and shocking
response arise from within my own mind?
Probing deeper into this mystery, I and others began to lucidly challenge the boundaries of
dreaming as we sought out the unexpected, the unknown, the abstract. Increasingly, we let go of
manipulating the dream and directing the dream events as we opened up to the unconscious.
Surprisingly, something responded. An inner awareness behind the dream provided answers,
observations, insight. Carl Jung theorized that an inner “ego” might be discovered within the
“psychic system” of the unconscious; I propose that lucid dreaming has the potential to show that
his theory contains fact. Like Hilgard's “hidden observer” in deep hypnosis, lucid dreaming also
shows an inner observer with whom the lucid dreamer can relate.
In part two, I explore the limits of awareness available to a lucid dreamer. I show examples,
both mine and others’, of numerous conceptual explorations as well as attempts to procure
telepathic and precognitive information while lucid. And, with the help of research from lucid
dreamer Ed Kellogg, Ph.D., I delve into the topics of physical healings while lucid, mutual lucid

dreams, and interacting with deceased dream figures.
Those who have experienced lucid dreams will find here numerous techniques, tips, and
challenges to consider in their own lucid explorations. For those who have never experienced a
lucid dream or do not truly understand the experience, I hope to act as a dream anthropologist of
sorts—explaining the lucid dream terrain, the local customs, the rituals, and something of the
inhabitants, the dream figures, as lucid dreamers consciously interact with them in the
psychological space of dreams. In the book's appendixes, I provide advice and guidance for
those who wish to become lucid dreamers or improve their lucid dreaming skills.
Lucid dreaming provides us a means to explore, experiment, and question the nature of
dreaming and, as some might say, the nature of the subconscious—the largely unknown part of
our selves. For this reason alone, psychologists, therapists, consciousness researchers, and
dreamers should have an intense interest in the experiences and experiments of lucid dreamers.
As I see it, lucid dreaming is a unique psychological tool with which to consciously investigate
dreaming and the subconscious.
In many respects, this book responds to those who claim that lucid dreaming simply involves
expectation, which automatically creates mental models to be experienced. By lucidly going
beyond expectation and the expected, I attempt to show that much more is going on here.
Consciously aware in the dream state, we have access to deeper dimensions of information and
knowing that can hardly be explained by expectation or mental modeling. This way is not for the
faint of heart or those comfortable with unexamined beliefs.
The journey into lucid dreaming truly is a journey within your conscious and unconscious self.
Here, not only will you meet your beliefs, your ideas, your thoughts, and expectations—often
materialized in the dream space—but also your fears, your hopes, your limitations, and intents.
In responding to those challenges, those self expressions, you make your path. I hope this book
helps guide you along the way and gives you insight into your self-creations and the larger dream
reality. I wish you well on your journey.
Robert Waggoner
PART 1
THE JOURNEY INWARD
1

STEPPING THROUGH THE GATE
LIKE MANY CHILDREN, I HAD AN INTENSE DREAM LIFE. DREAMS WERE an amazing theater of the
mind featuring both glorious adventures and moments of sheer terror. In one dream, a songbird, a
meadowlark, I believe, landed on my chest and sang me its simple song, which I immediately
understood and woke up singing. In another dream, I found myself on a fifteen-foot Pogo stick
bouncing down the deserted streets, almost flying. On occasion I seemed to be an animal—a dog
or coyote, for example—trotting along the dark night's sidewalks in a four-legged gait, totally at
peace, seeing the neighborhood from a canine's drooping-headed, tongue-wagging perspective.
With dreams like these, I was a child who had to drag himself out of bed.
In those early years, I remember clearly only one spontaneous lucid dream. In it, I was
wandering the local library and suddenly saw a dinosaur stomping through the stacks. Somehow
it dawned on me: If all dinosaurs are extinct—this must be a dream! Now consciously aware that
I was dreaming, I reasoned further: Since this was a dream—I could wake up! I reasoned
correctly and awoke safe in my bed.
That youthful experience illuminates the essential element of lucid dreaming: the conscious
awareness of being in a dream while you're dreaming. In this unique state of awareness, you can
consider and carry out deliberate actions such as talking to dream figures, flying in the dream
space, walking through the walls of dream buildings, creating any object desired, or making
them disappear. More important, an experienced lucid dreamer can conduct experiments in the
subconscious or seek information from the apparently conscious unconscious.
But I'm getting ahead of myself . . .
In those preteen days, before I began lucid dreaming regularly, three experiences kept alive
my interest in dreaming and the psyche: occasional dreams that seemed to be precognitive, an
unexpected “vision experience,” and the very real sense of having access to an inner knowing.
Like many, I found life's deepest mysteries in the mind.
For me, the occasional precognitive dream often appeared as small events, like dreaming of
someone making an odd statement in a dream, only to hear a real person make the same odd
statement a few hours later, or to have a voice in the dream announce an observation that later
would be proven correct. Once, the voice explained that the dream symbols meant the dream
events would take three years to transpire. I kept track of that date and something incredible did

indeed happen in the waking world, directly related to the dream from three years earlier.
1
Precognitive dreams challenged my budding scientific worldview and disrupted my
traditional religious and spiritual views. Strange coincidences, self-fulfilling prophecies, or
unknown information? How was one to tell?
One day in my preteen, church-going mind, I had a mini-epiphany. It occurred to me that if
God was the same “yesterday, today, and forever,” as they said in the Old Testament, then God
must exist outside of time, apart from time, in a place where time had no meaning. And, if that
were true, then perhaps dreams were the gateway to a place without time, where time existed in
one glorious Now. Yet my young science-educated mind balked at this notion. A dreamt event
followed by a waking event could be nothing more than sheer coincidence and didn't necessarily
entail any foreknowing. Or perhaps it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which I unknowingly
helped bring about the event that I dreamt. And even when a dream voice made an observation
that later turned out to be true, perhaps my creative unconscious had simply noticed things and,
by calculating the likely outcome of those things, made a clever announcement.
As this spiritual questioning was going on, another fascinating incident occurred. One Sunday
evening when I was eleven or twelve, I lay on my bed reading a book and stopped for a moment
to think. As I absentmindedly looked up at the ceiling, my head suddenly turned north and I began
to see a vision of a Native American setting overlaying the physical scene. I struggled to free
myself from this unexpected experience while another part of me took in the vision. Finally it
stopped.
At that young age, what do you do with something like this? In my case, I went to the library. I
flipped through a number of books about the Old Testament containing commentary on visions
but found little of value for me there. I also checked out a few books on Native American culture
and discovered the vision quest, a traditional practice by which youth gain insight into their
lives. Normally a vision quest occurs in a ritual fashion. The young person is obligated to leave
the tribe and travel alone for a period of days of fasting, praying, and waiting for the visionary
experience. Yet why would something like that happen to me? Only years later did I discover
that our family had Native American ancestry.
2

Somewhere in this time period, I also recognized the presence of an “inner advisor,” for lack
of a better term. At certain times, when I considered things deeply, an inner knowing appeared in
my mind. It was such a natural thing, I assumed everyone experienced this. It was like having the
services of a wise old man inside. For example, after a very simple incident that most anyone
would ignore, the inner knowing would make an observation about life or suggest the prosaic
incident as a living parable. The comments seemed intelligent, even remarkable. I began to sense
that all around me life had meaning, if I only cared to look. Since I lived in the middle of
Kansas, far from the centers of world power, the pace of life was slower and perhaps simpler,
yet below the surface, at another level, I knew we had everything, all the lessons of life.
Like any teenager, I'd pester this inner advisor—What am I? Who am I? To these questions I
was given two answers and then never visited the issue again (although the answers rolled
around my mind for decades). In one instance, to my “Who am I?” the inner advisor responded,
“Everything and nothing.” Okay, I thought, any person in a sense has the potential capabilities of
all, but in having them also has nothing, for time or the fates will sweep it all away. In those
words, too, I sensed a hidden connection between the rich lavishness of Being and the complete
freedom of Nothing. But still not entirely content with being a place marker between two
extremes, I continued to pester myself and, by extension, the inner advisor with the question of
identity until, one day, an answer came that laid all further questions to rest. “You are what you
let yourself become,” said the inner advisor. That answer satisfied me completely: The living of
life was an allowing of self .
Altogether, the precognitive dreams, the vision experience, and my search for spiritual
meaning kept me probing for satisfying and complete answers. Obviously, my intense inner life,
sparked by thoughtprovoking dreams, created a persistent desire to accept, abandon, or perhaps
bridge one of the two worldviews: the scientific and the spiritual. Which is why in 1975, at age
sixteen, I picked up one of my oldest brother's books, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don
Juan by Carlos Castaneda, and embarked on my first lesson in lucid dreaming.
As some readers may know, Carlos Castaneda was an anthropology graduate student at UCLA
in the 1960s who sought to learn from native shamans about psychotropic plants in the
southwestern United States and Mexico. According to his story, he met a Yaqui Indian sorcerer,
don Juan, who agreed to teach him about hallucinogenic plants. In the process, don Juan

provided Castaneda with a unique view of the world. Even more important, perhaps, don Juan
supplied techniques to experience this new worldview.
The philosophy of don Juan might be summed up in these words, spoken to Castaneda:
“[Y]our idea of the world . . . is everything; and when that changes, the world itself changes.”
3
Don Juan constantly pushed Castaneda to consider new and world-changing ideas and to become
more mentally flexible.
Castaneda has recounted in numerous books his decade-long association with don Juan. While
many have openly questioned Castaneda's veracity in storytelling,
4
his many books nevertheless
contain a number of provocative ideas and, like many young people, I was intrigued. I read
Journey to Ixtlan and decided to try just one of the ideas, never imagining how transformative
an idea could be.
Don Juan suggests to Castaneda a simple technique to “set up dreaming” or become conscious
in the dream state. “Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands,” don Juan instructs
Castaneda. After some discussion about the meaning of dreaming and the choice of hands as an
object to dream about, don Juan continues. “You don't have to look at your hands,” he says.
“Like I've said, pick anything at all. But pick one thing in advance and find it in your dreams. I
said your hands because they will always be there.”
5
Don Juan further advised Castaneda that whenever an object or scene that he was looking at
began to shift or waver in the dream, he should consciously look back at his hands to stabilize
the dream and renew the power of dreaming.
Simple enough, I thought. So, before going to sleep each night, I sat cross-legged in bed and
began looking at the palms of my hands. Mentally, I quietly told myself, “Tonight, I will see my
hands in my dream and realize I'm dreaming.” I repeated the suggestion over and over, until I
became too tired and decided to go to sleep.
Waking up in the middle of the night, I reviewed my last dream. Had I seen my hands? No. But
still hopeful, I fell back asleep remembering my goal. Within a few nights of trying this

technique, it happened. I had my first actively sought lucid dream:
I'm walking in the busy hallways of my high school at the junction of B and C halls. As I
prepare to push the door open, my hands spontaneously fly up in front of my face! They literally
pop up in front of me! I stare in wonder at them. Suddenly, I consciously realize, “My hands!
This is a dream! I'm dreaming this!”
I look around me, amazed that I am aware within a dream. All around me is a dream.
Incredible! Everything looks so vivid and real.
I walk through the doors a few feet toward the administration building while a great feeling of
euphoria and energy wells up inside. As I stop and look at the brick wall, the dream seems a bit
wobbly. I lucidly remember don Juan's advice and decide to look back down at my hands to
stabilize the dream when something incredible happens. As I look at my hands, I become totally
absorbed in them. “I” now see each fingerprint, each line, as a giant flesh-toned canyon that I
float within and through. The world has become my palm print, and I'm moving about its vast
canyons and gullies and whorls as a floating speck of awareness. I no longer see my hand; I see
cream-colored, canyon-like walls of varying undulations surrounding and towering above me,
which some part of me knows as my fingerprints or palm prints! As for me, “I” seem to be a dot
of aware perception floating through all of this—joyous, aware, and full of awe.
I'm wondering how this could be, when suddenly my vision pops back to normal proportions
and I see again that I am standing, hands outstretched, in front of the administration building. Still
consciously aware, I think about what to do next. I walk a few feet but feel an incredible urge to
fly—I want to fly! I become airborne heading straight up for the intense blue sky. As my feeling
of overwhelming joy reaches maximum pitch, the lucid dream ends.
I awake in bed, totally astounded, my heart pounding and head reeling. Never had I felt such
intense feelings of elation, energy, and utter freedom. I had done it! I had seen my hands literally
fly up to face level in my dreams as if propelled by some magical force and I realized, “This is a
dream!” At the age of sixteen, I had become conscious in the dream state. And suddenly, like
Dorothy in Oz, I was not in Kansas any more.
Well, actually, I was in Kansas for another year, until I left for college.
THE PARADOX OF THE SENSES
My first lucid dream felt like a monumental achievement. I had actually become aware in a

dream. Moreover, in the don Juan tradition, this first lucid dream seemed filled with auspicious
symbols—becoming a speck of awareness floating through my palm prints, maintaining the
dream, working on awareness outside of the “administration building” (symbol for my own inner
authority, perhaps). I was excited.
Still, it seemed so paradoxical—becoming conscious in the unconscious. What a concept!
Like some teenage magician of the dreaming realm, I had done what scientists at the time
proclaimed could not be done.
Little did I know, during that same time in April of 1975, thousands of miles away at the
University of Hull in England, a lucid dreamer named Alan Worsley was making the first-ever
scientifically recorded signals from the lucid state to researcher Keith Hearne. By making
prearranged eye movements (left to right eight times), Worsley signaled his lucid awareness
from the dream state. Pads on his eyes recorded the deliberate eye movements on a polygraph's
printout. At that moment, Hearne recalls, “It was like getting signals from another world.
Philosophically, scientifically, it was simply mind blowing.”
6
Hearne and Worsley were the
first to conceive of the idea and demonstrate that deliberate eye movements could signal the
conscious awareness of the dreamer from within the dream state.
7
A few years later, in 1978, Stanford sleep lab researcher Stephen LaBerge, using himself as
the lucid dreaming subject, devised a separate, similar experiment of signaling awareness from
the dream state through eye movement. Publishing his work in more broadly read scientific
journals, LaBerge became strongly identified with this exciting discovery and a leader in its
continued research.
Back in Kansas, each night before I went to sleep I would look at my hands and remind myself
that I wished to see my hands in my dreams. Of course anyone who tries this will soon discover
that staring at your hands for more than ten seconds is quite boring. When you already feel
sleepy, it takes real effort to concentrate. Your eyes cross, your hands get fuzzy, your attention
wavers, within a minute or two you may even become so bored and tired as to go blank
momentarily. After a few minutes, I would give up and prepare for sleep. At the time, I chastised

myself for my lack of concentration and wavering focus, but later I came to feel that these natural
responses were actually the best approach, since the waking ego seemed too tired to care about
the game my conscious mind wanted to play. In fact, don Juan suggested that the waking ego
often felt threatened by the more profound nature of our inner realm. Perhaps a sleepy ego would
be less likely to interfere.
My next few lucid dreams were lessons in exquisite brevity. I would be in a dream, see my
hands in the course of the dream (e.g., as I opened a door with my hand or as if by some inner
prompting my hands would suddenly appear directly in front of me) and immediately realize I
was in a dream. I'd experience a rush of exhilaration, joy, and energy. As I took in the dream
surroundings, my feelings of joy rose to such levels that the lucid dream would begin to feel
unstable and then come to an end. I would awaken, full of joy but mystified by the sudden
collapse of the lucid dream.
This brought me to one of my first lessons of lucid dreaming:
To maintain the lucid dream state, you must modulate your emotions.
Too much emotional energy causes the lucid dream to collapse. Years later, I learned that
virtually all lucid dreamers realize this same lesson and as a result learn to temper their
emotions.
After reading don Juan's exhortation to Castaneda that he should try to stabilize the dream
environment and, bit by bit, make it as sharply focused as the waking environment, this became
my new goal. Don Juan advised that the dreamer should concentrate on only three or four objects
in the dream, saying, “When they begin to change shape you must move your sight away from
them and pick something else, and then look at your hands again. It takes a long time to perfect
this technique.”
8
In the next dream, I was walking at night and suddenly saw my hands appear directly in front
of me. I immediately realized I was dreaming. Lucid, I took a few steps and noticed the colors
were extremely vibrant; everything seemed so “real.” I felt euphoric and knew that the dream
would end unless I could regulate my feelings, so I looked back at my hands to stabilize the
dream and decrease my emotional upsurge.
After a few moments, I looked around at the grassy knoll on which I was standing. I seemed to

be inside a fenced enclosure that included a building, similar to a military or secured
installation. I took a few steps and looked at my hands again to stabilize the dream. There were
some small evergreens ten feet away, obviously recently planted. I knelt and touched the grass. It
felt soft and grass-like. I marveled at how lifelike and realistic everything looked and how I
could think about what I was seeing and choose what to do next. I touched myself and, Wow,
even I felt real! But I knew my awareness existed within a dream and I was touching a
representation of my physical body, which only felt like a real body.
Trying to make sense of what I was seeing, I had the intuitive feeling that the building housed
computers and was somewhere in the southwestern United States. But where? As I took a few
steps toward the building to look for a name, the imagery started to become unfocused. I looked
back at my hands but it was too late—the lucid dream collapsed and I awoke.
It began to sink in that knowing it was a dream did not make it seem unreal. The grass felt like
real grass. My skin felt like real skin. If I truly focused on something, like the ground, I could
actually see the individual blades of grass and grains of sand. When awake, we consider seeing
and touching as largely physical activities, but in lucid dreaming, I began to see that seeing and
touching were also mental activities and equally real-seeming when consciously aware in the
dream state. Which brought me to my next lesson:
Our senses provide little distinction between physical reality and the real-seeming illusion
of the lucid dream. Only the mind distinguishes between the two realities.
In later lucid dreams, I tried the other senses—taste, smell, and hearing—and discovered that
they, too, seemed real experiences, or at least largely real. Even self-induced pain—pinching
myself in the lucid state, for example—actually hurt. But if I pinched myself while telling myself
it would not hurt, it didn't hurt. Here I uncovered an odd aspect of the lucid dream realm: My
experience would normally follow what I lucidly expected to feel.
Fellow lucid dreamers I've met over the years seem to agree with me that the senses
proclaimed each experience as real as waking experience. Yet, experienced lucid dreamers note
that if they predetermine or expect what to feel or how to feel, they can alter the sensory
experience in line with their expectations. In other words, “As you believe, so shall it be” is a
powerful truth when lucid.
In the lucid dream state, the senses show themselves as the confirmers of expectation—not

infallible guides to sensory response—and experience is largely infused with mental expectation
about the experience. Just as in studies on hypnosis and pain reduction, the senses somehow
bend to the intent of hypnotic suggestion. In both lucid dreaming and hypnosis, the senses don't
appear as biological absolutes but more as the servants of the mind.
By age eighteen, I had visited a hypnotist to learn about selfhypnosis. I understood the basic
concept that suggestions made to us while intensely focused in a mild trance state influenced the
subconscious and affected our perceived experience. Now I could see that being consciously
aware in the subconscious (i.e., lucid dreaming) possessed similarities to deeper self-hypnosis.
Our suggestions in a state of hypnosis or self-hypnosis act on the senses. For example, we can
make a posthypnotic suggestion that certain foods will taste opposite to their normal taste and
experience the suggested taste upon waking. Or we can suggest that we will feel minimal pain
during, say, a tooth extraction, and then experience remarkably little pain. Similarly, when lucid
in a dream, the senses naturally follow expectation (expectation being a type of natural mental
suggestion). In fact, one of the advantages to lucid dreaming involves seeing the immediate
results of your suggestion or expectation. If I lucidly dream of a fire, for example, and expect to
feel no heat upon walking in it, I'll feel no heat. If I change my expectation to feel the fire's heat,
my new expectation will be realized, and I'll feel definite heat.
My lucid dreaming experiences made me wonder how extensively the mind influences
perception and sensation while waking. Conscious in the dream state, the influence seems
pervasive. During waking, I simply assumed I experienced things “as they actually exist.” Yet I
knew from my exposure to hypnosis that waking sensory experience could actually be
considerably modified.
All dreamers can see how unreliable the senses behave in telling us the difference between
waking and dreaming. In almost every dream, the senses don't inform us of the difference
between waking and dreaming; rather, they seem to confirm that whatever reality seems to be
happening is indeed happening. Dreaming seems real, our senses tell us. Waking seems real, our
senses tell us. To sense the reality of our situation requires a new perspective. The lesson:
Only by increasing our conscious awareness in the dream state can we ever realize the
nature of the reality we experience.
So, the senses pose a problem. They tell us we exist, but they don't indicate the state of our

existence: Are we awake, dreaming, or lucid dreaming? Since the senses don't remind us we're
lucid and in a dream, holding onto conscious awareness in the dream state requires considerable
training in greater mindfulness.
For example, in many of my early lucid dreams, my hands would appear and I'd realize I was
dreaming. Then as I lucidly interacted with the dream, some interesting dream figure would
become so compelling and real-seeming that my attention to “the dream as dream” decreased
significantly. I'd begin to forget that this was “all a dream.” Just as in waking, your conscious
attention can begin to drift when lucid dreaming. After a few unfocused moments, you're swept
into the dreaming, following its movements, suddenly unaware and no longer lucid. Not only did
I need to be consciously aware of being in a dream, I needed to be consciously aware of being
aware!
Once again, a new lesson emerged:
Lucid dreamers must learn to focus simultaneously on both their conscious awareness and
the apparent dreaming activities. Lucid dreamers who become overly focused on the
dreaming activities get swept back into non-lucid dreaming. So too, lucid dreamers who
become inattentive to the fact of their conscious awareness risk becoming lost to the
dreaming. To maintain lucidity, we must develop a proper balance of mindful, aware
interacting to engage the dream consciously .
In an environment that appears real, our awareness has to adopt a neutral stance: be in the
environment but not of the environment. Engage the dream, but never forget it's a dream. In my
experience, keeping your foot on the tightrope of awareness is an ever-present challenge. In
about a third of my early lucid dreams, I would become lucid but eventually, through inattention
or engrossment, I'd fall off the tightrope. Each time I fell off, though, it acted as another lesson in
the importance of maintaining mindful awareness.
The awareness needed for meditation, at least some forms of it, seems analogous to what
lucid dreamers seek to develop. Meditators, especially beginners, have to learn a sense of
balance when they turn inward; otherwise, they can fall asleep while meditating or become
caught up and engaged with entrancing thoughts. Likewise, beginning lucid dreamers often hold
focused awareness for only a short period of time. It takes practice and patience and poise to
hold awareness consciously while being confronted with new thoughts or images—the products

of the mind.
As you log time in the lucid dream realm, you develop poise, confidence, skills, and
flexibility. Your awareness begins to relate differently to thoughts and images. You don't get
swept into dream or thought events as easily; rather, you pick and choose what to accept with a
greater sense of engaged detachment.
At deeper levels of lucid dreaming, you might discover how to remain aware even when the
dream visually ends, and then wait for a new dream to form in the mental space around you, as I
did, for example, in the following lucid dream (October 2002):
I seem to be walking through a small town. I enter a simple restaurant and walk through it into
a mechanic's garage. I see a door and decide to slip through it, even though it seems to have a
string attached to an alarm. As I get out into the street, I look around and realize, “This is a
dream.”
Lucidly aware now, I start flying up the street, looking at the people sitting in candle-lit cafes
and walking down the street. The detail is incredibly vivid. I sing a funny rhyming song as I look
at things. I keep flying farther and end up outside of town with a strong inclination to fly to the
right. But then in a moment of conscious choice, I exercise my right to change the direction of the
dream and decide, no, I'm going into the darkness, and I turn left.
As I move forward in the darkness, the visual imagery disappears. For a very long while, I
feel that I'm moving without any visual imagery—there's only a foggy dark-gray void. I keep
moving in this visually empty space and begin to wonder if I am going to wake up. But suddenly
a scene appears, bit by bit. First a bush, then a tree, then another tree. Soon the dream fleshes out
nicely, and I stand, lucid, on a gently sloped hill, like something you'd see in Britain, with small
leafy trees and lots of green grass. I notice that right next to me is a small bush with berries on it.
I examine it closely.
Suddenly, I have the awkward realization that my body in bed is having a hard time breathing
(even though I continue to see the lucid dream imagery of the green hills). While my conscious
awareness is admiring a grassy spot in a lucid dream, I try to feel the breathing obstruction. With
this bifocal awareness, I gently put some mental energy into making my physical head move up
and away from the bed sheets or pillow while concentrating on remaining in the lucid dream.
This seems to work. But finally, I decide to wake into physical reality and determine what is

hampering my breathing.
With experience, you'll realize that sometimes you can be consciously dreaming and also
aware of your physical body in bed. To stay in the lucid dream, you have to maintain your
primary focus there, but, on occasion, you can check in on the physical body's awareness. In this
example, when I woke, the bed sheet really was in my mouth!
As we become more experienced with lucid dreaming, we discover how to maintain
awareness even when the dream imagery has all disappeared. In learning how to lucid dream,
we learn much more than how to manipulate dream objects and symbols; we learn the
importance and proper use of conscious awareness.
2
DOES THE SAILOR CONTROL THE SEA?
BEFORE DREAM RESEARCHERS PROVED LUCID DREAMING AS A DEMON strable experience and
published the results, I spent six years practicing it by myself and often defending the experience
of it in conversations with others who routinely told me, “It's impossible to become conscious in
the unconscious of sleep.” During those years, I was greatly influenced by my father, whose
insistence on intellectual integrity helped me accept the validity of my paradoxical experience
while also accepting that my interpretation of the experience could be far off the mark. As a
result, I continued deeper into lucid dreaming while regarding my interpretation of the
experience as a working hypothesis or a “provisional explanation.”
In retrospect, this period of my life taught me to view much of science as providing this same
kind of “provisional explanation,” not the final word. I saw that scientists and the prevailing
cultural wisdom can occasionally ignore or explain away what later science or more enlightened
times accept. In the case of lucid dreaming, Western science doubted its existence for at least a
century, if not longer.
Thankfully, some of my high school friends were open to trying this idea of conscious
dreaming and “finding one's hands” in their dreams. It became a challenge of sorts. Within a
week or so, one friend reported that while in a dream his hands suddenly appeared in front of his
face. As he looked at them, he thought, “Oh, my hands. This is a dream,” and decided to wake
up.
“Why didn't you do something,” I asked him, “like go flying or something?”

“It was just a dream,” he said. “It wasn't real. So I woke up.”
This cultural bias toward the waking state as “real” and any other state as “unreal”—and
therefore unworthy of attention or study—exists as a mental block for many. Yet if we presume
that little can be learned from any state other than waking, we largely ignore any state other than
waking and thus perpetuate the bias.
“This important phenomenon [lucid dreaming] has been dismissed as a psychic chimera by
many authors and derided as a scientific willof-the-wisp by others,” explains J. Allan Hobson, a
Harvard sleep and dream researcher. “[The philosopher Thomas Metzinger] knows, as I do, that
lucid dreaming is a potentially useful state of consciousness.”
1
Lucid dreaming offers insight into
the scientific study of consciousness, since neuroscientists could potentially investigate the
relation of brain activity to subjective experience while lucidly aware and compare it to waking
and dreaming states.
An occasional lucid dreamer himself, Hobson suggests that “an MRI study of lucid and non-
lucid dreaming is a highly desirable next step in the scientific study of consciousness. The
technical obstacles to the realization of such an experiment are formidable but the main obstacle
is political and philosophical.” Hobson observes, “Many scientists rule out any study of
subjective experience especially one as dubious and evanescent as lucid dreaming.”
2
Overcoming the barriers of science, theory, and culture may be the constant burden of any
proven paradoxical experience such as lucid dreaming. Twenty-five years after my first lucid
dream, I found myself once again defending lucid dreaming—not so much from scientific
researchers who ultimately accepted the official scientific data on the subject, but from
concerned psychotherapists and dreamworkers.
At a recent International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) conference,
psychotherapists began singling me out. It seems another psychologist had mentioned hearing me
speak at a conference in Copenhagen during which I wove together lucid dream experiences
with comments by Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud to suggest that lucid dreaming may be a means
to explore and acquaint ourselves with the larger Self, or collective aspects of the psyche. After

hearing my talk, this particular psychologist reconsidered her negative-leaning predisposition to
lucid dreaming and realized the potential value in lucid dreaming as a means of psychological
exploration and integration.
So now I began to meet the assorted—and yet-to-be convinced— colleagues of this newly
swayed psychologist. Most began by telling me that their academic training had taught them to
consider dreaming as a message from the deepest part of our selves. To “control the dream,” as
they assured me that lucid dreamers do, would destroy or pollute the pure message from this
deep part of our selves. Though they were too polite to voice it, the suggestion hung heavy in the
air—only a narcissistic fool would encourage lucid dreaming.
After a few hallway encounters in which I groped for the words to make my point, an analogy
came to me that seemed to bring greater awareness into the conversation. My analogy is this:
No sailor controls the sea. Only a foolish sailor would say such a thing. Similarly, no lucid
dreamer controls the dream. Like a sailor on the sea, we lucid dreamers direct our perceptual
awareness within the larger state of dreaming.
Oh, the power of an analogy. Suddenly, I saw in the eyes of my querying psychotherapists the
realization that my lucid dreaming experiences were simply attempts to understand the depths of
dreaming and, by extension, the Self. Suddenly, we were on the same team—dreamers trying to
fathom the beauty and magnificence of dreaming. Now, lucid dreaming had potential for
increased awareness, instead of narcissistic flight!
3
In fact, as I interacted with these Jungian-
trained psychotherapists, I remembered a recent lucid dream with definite Jungian overtones
(April 2005):
My wife and I and my brother (who occasionally changes) seem to be stuck in an old post-
Depression farm household that is struggling to keep food on the table. The farmwife comes
home with three children, and they put some beans and other items on the stove to cook.
After a while, they serve us at the kitchen table, placing a small portion of beans on our
plates. But there seems to be a problem of some sort. Standing behind me, I notice a tall slender
black woman who seems to be with us. It seems the farmwife doesn't care for her. We wait.
As I sit there, I look at my brother and then at the black woman; it suddenly occurs to me that

this is a dream. Aware now, I stand up and want to know what this means. Lucid, I pick up the
black woman and place her in front of me, asking, “Who are you? Who are you?” She looks at
me and surprises me with her unexpected response. “I am a discarded aspect of your self,” she
says, and immediately I sense the truth of her statement and feel the need to reintegrate her into
my being. She seems to evaporate into me, as a brief wisp of light energy.
Many Jungians might suggest this lucid dream illustrates integration with a shadow element,
represented by the black woman standing behind me. In Jung's theory, shadow elements consist
of repressed, ignored, denied, or misunderstood thoughts, feelings, or impulses that continue to
reside in the realm of the subconscious. In some instances, the shadow element appears in a
“shadow's position” to the dreamer, normally behind the dreamer.
Jung maintained that these shadow elements may adopt the guise of dream figures to interact
with the dreamer as they seek integration or acceptance by the conscious self to create a more
fully integrated Self. In this example, the apparent reintegration happens almost immediately,
when I lucidly question and understand the dream figure's presence in the dream and accept her
openly.
Once I became lucidly aware in this dream, I recognized that something needed resolution.
(By this time in my lucid dreaming experience I was aware of the importance of approaching the
area of sensed emotion or conflict in the dream, instead of ignoring it.) As I instinctively placed
the figure of the black woman in front of me, I consciously intended to understand her place in
the dream and what she represented. In the process, I received both a conscious answer and an
infusion of energy into my awareness. Facing her, I felt the dream figure's energy evaporate into
me, as a wispy, colored, light vapor washing toward me. The “discarded aspect” had apparently
been welcomed home.
As it happened, in the week after this dream I felt new energy regarding a project that I had
discarded years ago as unachievable. The project? You're holding it in your hands. It feels odd
to say that reintegrating a discarded aspect into yourself brings a certain energy and imaginative
spirit, but after this lucid dream I could suddenly feel the new ideas and positive emotions about
writing a book. The wall of doubt surrounding my old goal had suddenly crumbled. Yet to begin
work on this project, I had to make other changes that I saw symbolically illustrated and
exaggerated in this dream. I had to overcome the culturally ingrained, deep belief about

“working to keep food on the table,” an issue seemingly represented by this obviously struggling,
post-Depression farm family.
At the time of the dream, to concentrate on a book seemed incompatible with a full-time job.
Yet, in the year following the dream, the desire grew. I overcame my inner concern about
finances, reduced my traditional job responsibilities, and began to focus on this book.
So, no. No sailor controls the sea. Only a foolish sailor would say such a thing. Similarly, no
lucid dreamer controls the dream. But like a sailor on the sea moving toward an island or point
on the sea's horizon, we lucid dreamers direct the focus of our intent within dreaming to seen and
unseen points. In so doing, we come to know the limited realm of our awareness compared to the
magnificent depth and creativity of what I refer to as “the dreaming.” As a portion of our
conscious awareness rides upon the surface realm of the subconscious, we sense the support and
the magnificent majesty of the unconscious below.
THE LIMITATIONS OF AN ANALOGY
Sadly, the power of the sailor and the sea analogy goes only so far. Additional concerns about
lucid dreaming arose from various viewpoints. While many people understand that the conscious
directing of one's focus while in the lucid dream state does not equate to “control” of the dream,
they still feel reticent about the idea of lucid dreaming. Underneath it all, three issues begin to
surface: 1) a fear of the subconscious and its processes, 2) concern for the dream as sacred
message, and 3) using lucidity to escape and to avoid personal growth.
So, let's tackle these three ideas—or as I would call them, misconceptions—about lucid
dreaming.
Fear of the Subconscious
In investigating fear of the subconscious, I came to understand that some people, including highly
trained psychologists, have what amounts to a basic fear of the subconscious. They simply do not
believe that the waking self should interact with unconscious or subconscious elements. The
psychiatrist R. D. Laing commented that society has a “psychophobia, a fear of the deeper
contents of our own minds.”
4
Often, behind this fear of lucid dreaming, lies a hidden concern
about “messing up subconscious processes.” Which subconscious processes? Well, no one can

ever say exactly because we don't understand the subconscious fully enough, leaving me to
suggest that, perhaps, with lucid dreaming, we finally have a tool with which to explore it.
A healthy respect for what we call the unconscious or subconscious has considerable value.
However, a fear of what essentially constitutes a portion of our being does not seem healthy or
respectful; rather, it seems needlessly divisive and limiting. To counter our intense cultural
conditioning, we must possess a sense of curious engagement to venture into the unconscious.
Even though it's a part of us, it exists as terra incognita or, perhaps more appropriately, psyche
incognita—we simply have drawn a sketchy map of the psyche and marked a large segment in
frightful red letters, “Mind Unknown.” We will never develop a truer conceptualization of the
subconscious and unconscious if we only dance around it or consider it from the safe distance of
the waking world. Why not let go of fear and interact with the dream (or realm of the
subconscious) consciously?
Lucid dreamers have little support from a culture whose psychological theories and cultural
views often suggest that the subconscious contains the repository of dark thoughts, repressed
feelings, buried anxieties, and ancient antisocial instincts. They often must deal with just these
beliefs as they approach lucid dreaming. As a result, they invariably experience unusual things
as they attempt to “affirm” their place in the unconscious. As we will see, some lucid dreamers
deal with their own doubts and fears (made manifest) as well as the interesting, surprising, and
sometimes disturbing phenomena encountered in lucid dreaming. To be in the psychological
space of the unconscious requires considerable affirmation of self in spite of numerous cultural
conflicts.
Dream as Sacred Message
The viewpoint that dreaming exists as a sacred message from inner portions of our being is
pervasive. Any attempt to disturb the dream, to involve the (assumed tainted) ego with it, or
bring conscious awareness into it should, according to this viewpoint, be deemed fundamentally
profane and a violation of the sacred.
I, too, view dreaming as a profound and creative act that is essentially sacred. But does the
sacred prefer I always approach it as a dreamer unawares? Does the sacred have no interest in
interacting with me as an aware dreamer, an aware being? Or does the sacred prefer less
awareness in its dealings? Rather it seems that the sacred would take joy in dealing with greater

awareness, greater consciousness. Wouldn't the sacred appreciate the chance to inform, educate,
and instruct at a more aware level?
Further, if we look at our dreams as sacred messages, how many of these sacred messages do
we truly understand? For many people, remembering one dream a night seems quite an
achievement, even as another four to six dreams slip by unremembered. Then, of the dreams
recalled, how many can say they truly understand the sacred message in them? Does our interest
in calling the dream sacred simply reflect our inability to understand it? By discouraging
conscious interaction with the dream, we limit our ability to improve our understanding of it.
In the lucid dream in which I questioned the woman who announced herself as a discarded
aspect of myself, would I have understood this dream if I had not been lucidly aware and able to
question her? Would I have experienced new insights and new energy because of it? Only by
consciously attending to an important element of the dream did I receive this new level of insight
and energy.
Using Lucidity to Escape and to Avoid Personal Growth
Finally, some observers raise a concern about dreamers using lucid awareness to escape or
avoid a dream's message and, thus, the opportunity for personal growth the dream might
otherwise provide. In some cases, this is true, since in a lucid dream we have the ability to
choose and some dreamers do, indeed, choose to escape into an adventure. For example, a lucid
dreamer may decide to ignore an angry dream figure and fly away instead, thereby avoiding the
issue represented by the figure. More experienced lucid dreamers, however, would stop and
engage the dream figure to find out more about the situation, as I did in this lucid dream (October
2004):
I am walking down a street at night in my childhood neighborhood. I look toward some houses
on the right. Suddenly, a big black dog comes running toward me; in a funny way, I expect this.
The dog appears menacing and dangerous, but somehow this strikes me as very odd, and I even
seem to recognize the mean black dog. I think, “This is nothing. This is a dream.” I begin to talk
to the dog and firmly know there is nothing to fear. Purposefully, I project love onto it by saying
compassionate words. Now, another dog appears. It's a dachshund, like we had when I was a
child. Lucid, I begin to fly around the two dogs, who now both seem friendly and happy. Then I
decide to take the dachshund flying. I swoop down very low and grab it. Feeling it in my hands, I

begin to fly higher but wake up.
Lucid dreamers repeatedly find that when they project love, compassion, and care onto
unfriendly dream figures, like the menacing black dog here, the love and concern transforms the
image or introduces a new, positive dynamic—or in this case, a dachshund! By taking a direct
approach in this dream, I was able to transform fear (represented by the black dog) into
something benign, even lovable (represented by the dachshund, a fond memory from my
childhood), and quite possibly resolved an emotional issue at the subconscious level.
I argue that though lucid dreams may occasionally lead to escaping issues, most lucid
dreamers benefit from recalling more dreams than the average dreamer and, potentially, gain
more conscious awareness of inner concerns. At any rate, even for experienced lucid dreamers,
the number of non-lucid dreams—“untainted” by the dreamer's interaction—far outnumbers lucid
dreams. Most lucid dreamers would say that in less than ten percent of their dreams do they
become lucid. In my experience, I recall about three dreams per night, or about ninety dreams
each month. In an average month, I may have only three lucid dreams. Proportionally, more than
ninety-six percent of my remembered dreams occur in the non-lucid form, and four percent or
less in the lucid form. While at one time I recorded thirty lucid dreams in a month (in college) at
my prime quantitatively, two to five lucid dreams per month seem the norm nowadays.
Like all dreamers, if we purposely ignore a dream message, it likely returns in another dream
or some other form. All dreamers come to know that in the final analysis, lucid or not, there is no
escape from the Self.
LUCID DREAMERS WHO STILL BELIEVE IN CONTROL
Lucid dreamers, particularly beginners, can occasionally behave like “Conquistadors of
Consciousness,” as thoughtful lucid dreamer and writer Ryan Hurd put it,
5
and proclaim
dominion over a dreaming that they fail to understand or appreciate. I recall reading of a lucid
dreamer who flew into a crowded room of dream figures and gleefully announced, “I am your
god!” Oh brother, I thought.
Occasionally, lucid dreamers will come up to me after a talk and proclaim, “But I do control
the dream! I fly. I make things appear. I tell dream figures to disappear and they do. I really

control the lucid dream!”
My response generally goes something like this: “If you control the dream, who made the
grass green and the sky blue? Who created the new scene when you came around the corner or
flew through a wall into a new room? Did you control all that new scenery and detail into
being?” I also point out that if lucid dreamers control the lucid dream, they wouldn't spend so
much time trying to learn how to manipulate things. If they control the lucid dream, their lucid
dreams wouldn't suddenly collapse and end. Control suggests a fundamental dominance or
authority over. By contrast, lucid dreamers show varying degrees of ability to manipulate
themselves within the dreaming.
At this point, the lucid dreamer acknowledges that their “control” seems limited to directing
their focus. They don't “control” the color of the various items, the new vista when they fly over
a hill, the items in the rooms they just entered, or necessarily the length of the lucid dream itself.
Rather, they direct their focus within the larger dreaming around them. When unaware of these
points, a lucid dreamer stumbles into the philosophical perspective of the lucid solipsist—one
who believes that his or her waking self in the dream is the only reality.
Don Juan cautioned Castaneda that the presumption of control could become a major
stumbling block along the path. Since the ego finds security in the feeling of control, it habitually
occupies those areas deemed under its control. Any journey into one's depth requires the
flexibility and courage to accept a more profound reality and move outside of the area of the
ego's control.
When lucid dreamers focus upon what they don't control, they then realize all the things
happening without their conscious involvement and understand that they direct their focus but do
not control the dream. No sailor controls the sea. No lucid dreamer controls the dream. Like
sailors on the sea or lucid dreamers in the dream, we can only direct our focus within that
environment, which begs the question: If the lucid dreamer does not create the scene or the
objects in the room, what or who does? As we progress deeper into lucid dreaming, this
question will become even more pressing.
In the meantime, let's accept our ability to direct our focus within the conscious dream and
investigate the mysteries of awareness.
3

MOVING IN MENTAL SPACE
ADVENTUROUS LUCID DREAM EXPLORERS ARE LIKELY TO ENCOUNTER several phenomena along
their path. Out-of-body experiences, for example, are quite common. In fact, a survey of lucid
dreamers conducted by The Lucidity Institute shows a strong correlation between lucid dreaming
and out-of-body experiences (OBEs). In the study, lucid dream experts Lynne Levitan and
Stephen LaBerge report that “of the 452 people claiming to have lucid dreams, 39% also
reported OBEs . . .”
1
In fact, many thoughtful, intelligent people have reported having OBEs. Author, professor, and
philosopher of consciousness Thomas Metzinger, for example, wrote of experiencing an “out-of-
body (OBE) state again” during an afternoon nap.
2
Lecturer and writer Dr. Susan Blackmore,
author of Consciousness, “had a dramatic out-of-body experience” that led to her deeper
investigation into the nature of consciousness.
3
I also recall a prominent sleep and dream
researcher speaking at an IASD conference at Tufts University who mentioned an apparent out-
of-body type of experience while recovering from an illness.
My own experience with the out-of-body state occurred within six months of my first lucid
dreams. As my seventeen-year-old self lay in bed and began to drift off to sleep, I felt an
incredible energy and buzzing around me, particularly around my head. I was startled, but not
sure whether I should be alarmed. The buzzing vibration sounded like a thousand invisible bees
hovering around my head, or an Australian didgeridoo. I felt incredible energy all around me.
Remembering don Juan's advice, I told myself not to fear and just go along with it. Don Juan had
told Castaneda that fear was the first barrier to overcome, since the ego used fear as a reason not
to explore one's totality and, instead, maintain the ego's dominance of the waking self.
During one of these buzzing episodes, I noticed that I seemed suspended in space. I viewed
the room from a perspective about five feet above my physical body, which, of course, seemed
extremely odd! How was I getting a view like that, when I knew my body lay in bed with eyes

closed?
That summer an even stranger incident occurred. I found myself flying around the sycamore
trees in the front yard, doing loop de loops, really enjoying myself in the early morning dawn. It
felt very real, not dream-like at all. Suddenly, I saw someone coming down the street on a
bicycle. I felt the need to hide, so I flew to the roof of our house and hid behind the peak to
watch. Moments later, the young person on the bike threw something at our house! I immediately
woke up, alarmed at what I had just seen. It was around 6 a.m. and no one else was awake. I put
on some shorts and rushed to the front door. I opened the door and, yes, someone had, indeed,
thrown something at our house, and right where I expected—the morning newspaper! I was
stunned. Could I have actually seen the newspaper boy ride his bike by our house and throw the
newspaper? Could I have witnessed that from the roof of our house while my body lay in bed?
Imagination creates beautiful imagery, so I wondered if this was an interesting case of
imagining a scene in a very real and vivid dreamlike state that just “happened” to contain
elements of a normal daily event. Could I, on some deep level, have heard the paper land in the
grass on the opposite side of the house and simply concocted a dream about this subauditory
event? I know the experience happened—yet how to explain it?
I decided to ask one of my brothers. He listened to my story, then said, matter-of-factly,
“You're having out-of-bodies.”
“I have them sometimes,” he said, “and normally I fly around the neighborhood. I like to fly
around these sycamores, too.” I asked him how he knew they were out-of-bodies, and he
mentioned a book by Robert Monroe, Journeys Out of the Body.
4
He even gave me some advice
on dealing with the buzzing and how to roll out of my body.
5
“Out of bodies”—holy smokes! I didn't recall asking for them. Besides, all the buzzing and
humming and energy felt weird sometimes. Comparatively, lucid dreams were fun and easy to
understand, since my dreaming self played in the playground of my mind (or so I assumed). Even
the term out-of-bodies bothered me. It implies that the person's awareness has left the body and
now explores physical reality sans body. Yet, I definitely had a body image when experiencing

this state—it just wasn't a physical one. For this reason, I came to prefer the term “projection of
consciousness,” as suggested by metaphysical explorer and author Jane Roberts.
As you can see, while the OBE experience itself may be somewhat commonplace, interpreting
the experience is a challenge. If one's awareness seems apart from the physical body, then does
one experience a physical realm or an imagined realm, possibly a mental model of the physical
realm? If it seems an imagined realm, then how do we explain the rare but occasional instances
of apparently valid perceptions of the physical realm? And what does this say about the nature of
awareness? Does awareness require a physical body, or does awareness reside sometimes
within and sometimes without a physical body?
After reading about and talking with other lucid dreamers, I learned that many developed the
ability to lucid dream before experiencing spontaneous, and less frequent, OBE-type
experiences. One cannot help but wonder if this coincidence of lucid dreaming and projections
of consciousness result from an actual connection between the two experiences or if it relates to
the person's interest and involvement in working with awareness. In other words, once we begin
to lucid dream, do we then notice similar, subtle experiences of awareness?
On a number of occasions, in my college dorm room, I would take an afternoon nap with the
intention of having an OBE. In one attempt, I recall looking very closely at a white, textured
surface, just a fraction of an inch above my eye level. When I awoke, I realized that my
awareness may have been about eight feet above myself, carefully inspecting the ceiling tile! To
check it out, I precariously balanced a chair on my bed and stood on it to reach that same ceiling
height. Now, if I could just stick the top half of my head into the ceiling, I could get my physical
eyes in the same spot. The view seemed so close to what I had seen while apparently OBE. Just
maybe, my awareness had actually moved.
For me, the OBE usually occurred in the local environment (that is, in the general area of
where I had fallen asleep). Also I noticed that though I might fly around the neighborhood, I
unintentionally “changed” things. For example, if I decided to fly through a house, I might find a
window to fly through where no window exists in waking reality. Upon waking and recalling the
situation, I would note that I had unknowingly made it easier for myself to fly into the house by
mentally perceiving a window where none existed. Realizing this, I came to think of local OBEs
as a “reality plus one” phenomenon, meaning that OBEs seemed to mimic a waking-reality

model quite nicely, yet held “plus one,” or added elements, of apparent subconscious desire or